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Judgement Day is Calling

"Sir, which one do we target? SIR?!?"

The ISD Chimaera shuddered as the shields were hammered by a steady stream of red laser bolts.

"The closest one! Pick one and target it; I don't care which!" La Forge had to shout to be heard over the thundering of the Chimaera's turbolaser firing's reverberation, and the rattles and shakes caused by the shuddering of the ship.

"Sir, our shields won't last long against this!" Some crewman in the pit. It was hard to tell which, especially because they kept slamming into each other and falling over.

"Helm, bring us hard about! Move us to-" La Forge was cut off as the bridge seemed to be up-ended by an impact, dropping equipment and crew caught unaware. La Forge picked himself up and brushed some dirt off of his uniform. "We need to get out of this bind! Move it move it!"

"Trying to maneuver us farther from firing range, sir."

The Chimaera shook, even harder this time. "We've lost shields!"

"And somebody find out what's taking Iota so long!" Muscat was down in the pit taking care of a crewman who's caught his head on a sharp corner and was bleeding.

"Captain, we have incoming ships on vector 17.28!"

"Report!" La Forge managed to get this sentence out before the the ship was rocked again, this time by an explosion of a turbolaser. "And what was that?!?"

"Sir, I'm reading a Victory Star Destroyer and a pair of Nebulon-B Frigates..." The crewman looked confused. "Sir, they're opening a channel to us."

"Put them on audio." La Forge tried to compose himself before facing he enemy.

"Captain La Forge! You look like you could use a hand!"

There could be no mistaking that voice. It could be nobody else. Aarkon Syrtaras.

"Captain Syrtaras, what are you doing here? I thought you were needed in the home sectors?"

Vortagh laughed over top of Syrtaras. "We are needed there. And your point is?"

The Chimaera shook with more turbolaser blasts across her hull.

Syrtaras broke in. "So we didn't exactly follow our orders to the letter. We weren't going to miss this! Besides, our orders said 'Protect Imperial Assets'... Your Star Destroyer - despite some damage already done - looks to me a lot like an Imperial Asset."

What Syrtaras had said was true - the Chimaera, though somewhat battered, with some blackened plates and turbolaser scars, still stood as a proud symbol of the Imperial Navy and the Galactic Empire.

"Your help is much appreciated, Captain; Commodore..." La Forge swallowed his pride and moved on. "We can't take a lot more punishment from the CRLs as is...."

"We'll draw them off. You just keep going and take down that Golan station. We'll meet up with you after we've taken care of these two..."

"Good luck, Striker. ISD Chimaera out."

"We didn't even get a chance to tell him the rest of the good news," Vortagh said.

"It's okay," Syrtaras replied. "He'll find out soon enough, when he sees them launch."

"We should open a channel again just so we can laugh at his surprise." Vortagh smirked.

"Let's not waste any more time." Syrtaras signalled the fighters in the hangar. "Iota, thanks for stopping by, but it's time to return you to the Chimaera. By the way, there are about a million Rebels between here and there. Mind taking care of them?"

The voice of Lieutenant Alex was filtered due to the helmet he wore, but his words were still clear. "Only a million? Are you sure we even need to bother with so few?" He paused for a moment to let the chuckles of his squadmates recede. "Thanks for the pickup and the ammo, Striker. We're on our way."

Grand Admiral Daemon's shuttle was crash landed in a rocky but barren area of Geonosis. He was injured, but not badly, suffering a broken forearm and wrist, but most of his injuries were cuts and bruises. This was not his immediate concern, however. Surely the shuttle crash had attracted local attention, and he knew he did not have much time before the locals would come to investigate...

Leaving behind the remainder of the holocron and all but the most basic supplies, he fled from the crash site in haste. Before long, the expected local patrol came around, but they were sloppy and did not thoroughly investigate the area. They did an examination of the shuttle, and stole any supplies they thought to be of value. Concluding that any survivors would soon succumb to exposure to the elements, they shortly thereafter left.

After some time, Grand Admiral Daemon managed to smuggle himself offworld amongst the cargo of a freighter, but he was beginning to feel mentally uneasy... withdrawal from the holocron's energies was beginning to manifest itself.

Once offworld, he could not risk attracting attention to himself too soon... Nor did he want to reveal to the Empire at large his struggle against the holocron's still-powerful effects on his mind, and so he resolved to fall back to a safe place he had set aside as a contingency plan some years before...

With the intention of leading from his small hideaway until the sudden onslaughts of the symptoms receded, he "borrowed" a small vessel and set a course for the hideaway. Shortly thereafter, he arrived and had his injuries tended to properly by the medical droid on hand.

But before he could address the fleet and inform them of his being alive and well, withdrawal from the energies of the holocron finally caught up with him, all at once. The Grand Admiral collapsed to a catatonic state.

His body cared for by the medical droid, the Grand Admiral's mind slowly recovered over a period of some months, in a more rapid reversal of the symbiosis effect that had been so painstakingly built up over the preceding years...

When at last Grand Admiral Daemon had awakened from his incapacitated state, much had transpired in his absence... With his long-term absence, he had been officially declared Missing in Action, and Vice Admiral Polanski, by Imperial Law laid down in the Imperial Charter, had risen to the rank of Fleet Admiral and became the new leader of the Empire...

For a short time, from his hideaway, he followed the news of the Empire from afar, and contemplated his return. At last, however, he came to the conclusion that his part to play in the story of the Empire had perhaps run its course...

And so the Grand Admiral took a few hours to get his things in order, and boarded his "borrowed" transportation once more...

The holocron had indeed been helpful in unlocking files and other data the Grand Admiral had left behind. After some number of hours of digging through the files, Fleet Admiral Polanski and General Jansen had hit on something most strange... Just a sequence of seemingly nonsense characters. But viewed in the right character set, their meaning was all too clear to the experienced eye: Navigation co-ordinates.

Only, the co-ordinates pointed somewhere with no known habitable settlements could be located. Which meant only one possibility: Some sort of secret facility...

Polanski shut down his terminal and abruptly left for the bridge. Jansen locked his terminal and followed.

"Are we going where I think we're going?" Jansen knew the answer, but wanted to confirm.

"Of course."

"HULL BREACH ON DECK SEVEN!" MAR's shout cut through the din of the bridge, perhaps because of the words used, or perhaps because they were twice as loud as any other chatter.

"I'm going to take down the bomber, hold on, Nemesis." Steel's voice was made resonant by the life support kit in his fighter.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" MAR looked out the viewport and confirmed optically what he saw. "It's our target, the repair yard!"

"Got him, Nemesis! Tracking his friends now..." Steel was having a completely separate conversation, and Wedge had to try to follow them both.

"Confirmed, commander, that's the shipyard..." A sensor officer reported dutifully.

"But first we need to take care of that Victory Star Destroyer...!" MAR's attention shifted from the forward viewing are to the starboard side.

Admiral Fel was on the bridge as well, but he was reading something. Perhaps some sort of update from the ISD Chimaera.

"Admiral, the Rebels seem to be pulling back somewhat." MAR checked it against his datapad. "They're pulling back to what looks like a shipyard!"

Fel opened his mouth to respond, but Wedge was faster.

"A shipyard! Now that's exciting!" Wedge even smiled. "Set a course that will bring us into firing range. Let's turn their shipyard into slag, shall we? After this repair yard, of course."

MAR moved away from the viewport. "INCOMING!"

The bridge rang like a bell as a proton torpedo slammed into the forward hull of the Nemesis...

"Damage control to deck twelve! Repeat, damage control to deck twelve...!"

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